1.6 Features

@jasonc‌ In the latest mobile app (1.5) you can one-click run schedules and also manually run any combination of zones with minutes. Just click the ‘Play’ button on the main dashboard for these options. I will dig into your other post and provide some feedback. Thanks for your input!

I did not realize that. That’s great. Thank you.

@franz‌ Only just saw this, went to have a look - VERY nicely implemented, thank you.

@jasonc - regarding your ‘nit pick’ on naming conventions, I too get confused by the naming in Iro. It would seem the more standard naming used in the industry are ‘zones’ or ‘groups’ when referring to a valve controlling a number of heads, ‘programs’ when referring to a schedule for a group of ‘zones’. I know Iro is setting out to blaze a trail for smart irrigation systems but I’m not sure having their own set of names helps people cross over from the systems they use today.

Fair enough. Even replacing the “watering times” label with the label “schedules” would be an improvement since the term “watering time” does not fully encompass what this section includes. Either way, it was just a comment. I’m much more interested in a response regarding my concern about the way the smart cycle runs. Thanks.

@jasonc, thanks for the feedback on Smart Cycle. Unfortunately, our current design doesn’t allow for more than one watering time to be running at once. However, keep in mind that our Smart Cycle algorithms endure that each zone at least 30 minutes between the end of it’s last watering cycle, and the start of the next one. It doesn’t need to be totally idle, though–if there are enough other cycles in that watering time to be run in the meantime, it will run them and then get back to the first one when all of the other cycles are finished.

So, for watering times that run the same number of days, you can group them together within a WT and see less total wait time. I understand that this doesn’t help you for the schedules you’ve listed above, though, and we’ll keep working to make it better.

@jasonc‌ and @SteinyD‌ , I hear you about the “Watering Times” term–for some people “Program” or “Schedule Rule” might make more sense, but now we have the problem of confusing all of our users that now understand “Watering Time”. We’ll keep it in mind, though, as we continue to improve our mobile apps.

@jasonc‌ Re: the ET stuff, I agree that getting allowing power users to be able to specify the details of their system is an important feature. We’re a small team with a lot going on, but we’ll definitely get it in as soon as we can. Keep that feedback rolling in!

I agree with @jasonc about the current smart cycle putting too much delay between watering for my particular system. Is this something you can add a slider under the smart cycle switch (just like under weather intelligence) to customize the soak time?

To svento- just to be clear I have no issue with the soak time length. To coslor- I understand everything you’ve said about the smart cycle, and how WT works in general. The issue is who waters their flowers, grass, trees and shrubs the same number of days per week? The answer is no one should probably. The example of my own WT only has 3 WTs and on days where two run together it pushes my watering into the 9 'o clock hour even though it was supposed to start at 5:30am. This is especially troublesome for me since I live in the desert where it is hot and dry and you need to give the water a chance to soak in before the sun hits. For people who need to setup even more WTs, their complete watering duration has the potential to take a very long time. I figured the current design couldn’t mesh WTs together or it already would be doing this. However it doesn’t seem to be an impossibility either. This issue along with the guestimations being used for the water budgeting feature seem to be the two areas in need of urgent improvement.

I’ve also been a part of small teams and know that bandwidth can be quickly used up. I also know it’s important to listen to users to obtain real world feedback. I appreciate that you guys are listening and taking these comments into consideration. Thanks.

@coslor‌ - just a thought, since the current program will not mesh WTs together with the smart cycle, but it will mesh together several zones in the same WT, what about adding a “days” field along with the Zones & Durations input and getting rid of the Repeat field inside the WT? So it would say Zones, Durations & Days. Inside this section it could just be another drop down like the duration drop down and there you would select individual repeat options for each zone. Wouldn’t this then eliminate the need to recode the program to make the smart cycle work more efficiently?

@jasonc‌ : Thanks again for the input. Unfortunately, the hard part isn’t getting the GUI right–it’s in generating “programs” that the Iro can handle. It’s definitely a direction that we can look into, though.

@coslor - I figured it wasn’t the GUI, just thought adding another variable in the WT data might be an easier way to go. Thanks.